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Water from the Wednesday evening storm runs down the windows of the Radisson lobby in Manchester. (Bruce Taylor/Union Leader)

Heavy rain saturates NH in a matter of two hours

By TIM BUCKLANDNew Hampshire Union Leader

The National Weather Service issued several flash flood warnings throughout the state Wednesday evening, as heavy rain turned roads into sheets of water.

“If this had taken two days for this much rain to fall, no problem,” Margaret Curtis, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service based in Gray, Maine, said Wednesday evening. “Two hours? It’s a problem.”

Curtis said some areas of the state received as much as 4 inches of rain, while “multiple areas” were hit with at least 2 inches of rain.

“It’s very, very heavy rain,” she said.

But there is some good news, as the storm was expected to leave the state by midnight Wednesday, making the way for a spectacular day today, with forecasts calling for sunny skies and temperatures in the mid 70s.

“It’s just the next few hours we need to get through and we’ll be back to summer,” Curtis said.

She said the National Weather Service is concerned with flooding primarily on roads — Route 114 in Bradford was closed Wednesday evening because of flash flooding, she said — and in mountainous areas, where “the rain just rolls down the hillsides.”

But, she said, there shouldn’t be much river flooding, as rivers “were pretty low already.”

As of Wednesday evening, the Manchester Fire Department had received no calls for service related to the storm, District Chief Al Poulin said. He said the department had pumps at the ready for flooded basements and said he expected the calls would begin as the storm wrapped up.